The invention relates generally to a system and method for promoting an entity. More specifically, the invention relates to a method and system of promoting a plurality of web sites in communication with a computer network, such as the internet.
A number of business entities have developed web sites located on the internet to provide services, to display and sell products or to provide information to their customers. However, it is often quite difficult to attract visitors to a web site. Potential visitors must first be made aware of the domain name of the web site and secondly, they must be coaxed into visiting the web site. This process is made more difficult with the large number of web sites being accessible on the Internet.
In order to promote a web site, business entities often use traditional media outlets such as print, radio and TV to advertise a web site. While these traditional methods of promotion may work for its intended purposes, they are often quite expensive. Furthermore, these methods are not assured of reaching the intended audience, most notably, people with a proclivity to transact on the internet.
Partly because of the above, businesses also often advertise their web sites, on other, more popular web sites. These often come in the form of banner ads which are prominently displayed on a web page of the popular web site. The banner ads typically include a graphic or message promoting the business entity and a hyperlink which allows visitor to go directly to the web site of the ad""s sponsor. While the banner ads do reach people with a proclivity to transact on the internet, the scope of interest for the popular web site may be limited. Also, the popular web site typically will not reach as large a segment of a community as the traditional media outlets.
Even if traditional advertising and banner ads are successful in luring visitors onto a web site, initially, these methods typically do not create sufficient incentive for the potential visitor to thoroughly browse the contents of a web site. Furthermore, these forms of promotion typically do not generate incentives for a visitor to revisit the website.
Consequently, there is a need for a method and a system for promoting internet web sites which would provide incentives to visit and revisit an internet web site, and which would also provide incentives to thoroughly browse through a web site.
Accordingly, a novel method and system of promoting a plurality of web sites in communication with a computer network is presented herewith which avoids some of the drawbacks of, and improves upon, the prior art. In one embodiment, the subject invention includes a host site which hosts a web site that is accessed by a participant directly or through a hyperlink from a sponsor site. A sponsor site refers generally to any entity which has paid a fee to be included in the promotional system. The host site also includes a promotional applet which creates a graphical user interface (GUI) which is launched onto the participant""s computer, and is used to play a promotional game.
The promotional game requires the participant to browse through a plurality of sponsor sites in order to match indicia embedded therein with indicia located within the GUI. These indicia are changed and relocated periodically amongst the sponsored sites in order to encourage browsing through all the sponsor sites. The participant matches indicia by selecting the indicant within the sponsor site using a cursor control device such as a mouse or a touchpad (otherwise referred to as xe2x80x9cclickingxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cclicksxe2x80x9d). The host site communicates with the applet to track the indicia discovered and to verify if the indicant is authorized. Once a participant has matched enough indicia to satisfy a winning criteria, the participant is awarded a prize.
The subject method of promotion includes the step of creating a set of indicia and a set of criteria which determines when a participant has won. A subset of indicia are then distributed amongst a number of sponsored sites for embedding within the sponsored site. An applet within the host site creates a GUI which displays a promotional game card that includes a subset of the indicia generated. The GUI also includes a hyperlink to a directory of sponsor sites with hyperlinks to each site. The participant finds and matches indicants on their promotional game card with indicants found within the sponsored sites. The participant clicks on the hyperlinks to different web sites in order to travel to those sites and clicks on each indicant found therein. The host site tracks the participant""s movement on the computer network and the indicia which the participant has found.
A system for implementing the subject method will include at least one server in communication with a computer network. The server includes therein an application for tracking the movement of a participant within the computer network and a number of databases to store information. These databases may include a participant database to store participant information and an indicia database for storing the set of indicia and the uniform resource locator (URL) in which they are embedded.